USA > Maine > Maine; a history, Volume II > Part 4
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The new Senator had been active in political management but had held no important public offices. He had been a delegate to the Democratic National Convention of 1844 and is said to have taken a leading part in the manoeuvres which secured the nomination of Polk. He belonged to the conservative wing of the Democratic party but was more moderate than many of his allies.
Mr. Bradbury was an able lawyer and did creditable work in the Senate, but his chief fame is as an associate and survivor. He was a mem- ber of Bowdoin's most famous class, that of 1825, which contained Long- fellow, Hawthorne, and other distinguished men, and he survived them all. He lived to be the oldest graduate of his college and the senior ex-Senator of the United States. Mr. Bradbury died at Augusta on January 6, 1901, in his ninety-ninth year.
The matter of greatest public interest in Maine during the year 1847 was the conflict over the "Wilmot Proviso." In 1846 President Polk had asked Congress to appropriate $2,000,000 for purchasing Mexican territory when peace should be made. The House of Representatives voted the money, but with a proviso offered by David Wilmot of Pennsylvania, that slavery should forever be excluded from territory thus purchased. The bill reached the Senate almost at the close of the session, and that body was debating it on the morning fixed for the adjournment of Congress, when news came that the House had adjourned, and the bill was lost. At the opening of the next Congress the President again asked for money to buy Mexican territory and the House voted $3,000,000 for that purpose, but on the same condition as the year before. The Senate did not act on the bill but passed another granting $3,000,000 without the proviso.
An attempt was made in the House to attach the proviso, but it was
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defeated and the bill was passed. On the question of adding the proviso to the bill all the Maine members voted yea except McCrate, who was absent. On the passage of the bill, one Maine Democrat, Hamlin, and one Maine Whig, Severance, voted no; the other Representatives, all Democrats, voted yes. In Maine several of the leading Democratic papers took a decided stand in favor of the proviso. The Argus said that the North was united against making free territory slave, that it was itself in favor of the vigor- ous prosecution of the war, "but we say with frankness, with firmness, and with a full consideration of all the responsibility of the avowal, the Democ- racy of Maine ought not, and will not sanction any vote which will lead to the introduction into the Union of another inch of slave territory which is now free.">
When the Legislature of Maine met in May, it declared itself in favor of the principle of the proviso. Hannibal Hamlin's term in Congress had expired, and having served four years, the customary period at that time, he declined to be a candidate again, but once more entered the Maine House of Representatives. His object was partly to unite the Democrats of his district who had been so divided that three elections had been held without result, and partly to further his chances for the United States Senatorship at the next election. Mr. Hamlin now took the lead of the anti-slavery Democrats in the House and introduced three resolutions :
"The first declared that, 'Maine, by the action of her State govern- ment and representatives in Congress, should abide honestly and cheerfully by the letter and spirit and concessions of the Constitution of the United States, at the same time resisting firmly all demands for their enlargement or extension.' The second said that, 'The sentiment of this State is pro- found, sincere and almost universal that the influence of slavery upon pro- ductive energy is like the blight of mildew ; that it is a moral and social evil ; that it does violence to the rights of man as a thinking, reasoning, and responsible being. Influenced by such considerations, this State will oppose the introduction of slavery into any territory which may be acquired as an indemnity for claims upon Mexico.' The third asserted that, 'In the acqui- sition of any free territory, whether by purchase or otherwise, we deem it to be the duty of the general government to extend over the same the Ordinance of 1787, with all its rights, privileges, conditions, and im- munities.' "
An attempt was made to substitute other resolutions condemning slavery but proposing no action against it. The substitute was defeated, and the Hamlin resolutions passed the House, only six members voting no. In the Senate they were passed unanimously. It is doubtful, however, if the Demo- cratic leaders were as much opposed to the extension of slavery as this vote would seem to indicate, for during the ensuing campaign only two Demo- cratic conventions in the State declared in favor of the proviso.
The Whigs in their State convention, in county conventions, on the
"Argus, Feb. 3, 1847.
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stump and in the press, opposed the acquisition of territory, but declared that if any part of Mexico should be annexed it ought to remain as it then was, free from slavery. They accused the administration of waging a war of conquest and of treating the heroes of the war, Generals Scott and Taylor, (both of whom to the great embarrassment of the Democrats, chanced to be Whigs) with shameful injustice. Passing from national to State matters the Whigs charged their opponents with having hindered the development of Maine by opposing banks and corporations.
The candidates for Governor in the previous year were again nom- inated. The campaign was a quiet one, and there were 10,000 fewer votes cast than in the preceding year. Governor Dana, however, was this time elected by the people. The official returns gave Dana 33,429 votes, Bron- son 24,246, Fessenden 7,352, scattering 275.
Governor Dana's message to the Legislature which appeared a little before the opening of the campaign, had shown such opposition to slavery that it was quoted and praised by that influential anti-slavery, though Democratic journal, the New York Evening Post. But shortly after the election, the Governor issued a Thanksgiving proclamation in which he gave great offense by advising anti-slavery ministers to keep the subject of slavery out of their Thanksgiving sermons. He said: "Let not the voice of mur- muring disturb the songs of praise. Let party bitterness and sectarian zeal be silent. Let not the day be desecrated or the house of God profaned, by political harangues, assaults upon the institutions of our sister States, or denunciation of the terms of Union. But let us all join in a general festival that another year has passed, and we are still a united, prosperous and happy people." The Governor's exhortations, as he might have foreseen, produced little effect except to stir up ill feeling. The Whig styled his recommendations commands. The New York Tribune called them im- pudent.
The close of the year was marked by the sudden and unexpected death of Senator Fairfield, the result of an operation. As the Maine Legisla- ture did not meet until May, the right of appointing a Senator to serve until the Legislature acted or adjourned, devolved on Governor Dana. The privilege was an embarrassing one, for there would be many can- didates for election by the Legislature, the person already serving as Senator though only a locum tenens, would have an advantage and the Governor who appointed him would incur the displeasure of all the other candidates and their friends. Mr. Dana solved the difficulty by appointing W. B. S. Moore of Waterville, who promised to be satisfied with a few months' term. Mr. Moore was then Attorney-General of Maine. He was an able lawyer, and a skillful and influential politician. Subse- quently he was appointed by President Buchanan Consul-General to Canada.
Moore's appointment roused the anti-slavery men, and again they bent all their efforts to send Hamlin to the Senate. From the other wing of the
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party there were four candidates-Attorney-General Clifford, the leader of the Hunkers, or more extreme pro-slavery Democrats, who as a member of the Cabinet had the support of most of the national office-holders in Maine; ex-Governor Anderson, an unflinching Democrat, an intimate friend of Mr. Van Buren, and popular; Samuel Wells, a former Whig, and John D. McCrate, an experienced politician and persistent office-seeker, who was well inclined to Mr. Hamlin. The Democratic caucuses met on the same day. That of the House promptly nominated Hamlin by a good majority ; in the Senate caucus there was no choice. Fearing a repetition of the extreme and perhaps corrupt means used against them in the preceding year, the friends of Hamlin concealed their strength and allowed their oppo- nents in the Senate to believe that they could again defeat Hamlin's nomina- tion. An agreement was made that there should be no bolting but that all should support the regular Democratic nominee. The anti-Hamlin men had consented, feeling sure that Hamlin could not get the nomination of the Senate caucus and so would not be the regular nominee of the Legislature. The balance of power in the caucus was held by a few men who disliked slavery but who hesitated to go against the party leaders, the machine, and who also were anxious to be on the successful side. To win them by giving an impression of increasing strength, the Hamlin men refrained from throw- ing their full vote at first, but on the second ballot there was a gain for Hamlin of one vote, on the third of two, on the fourth the undecided men came over and Hamlin was nominated. Great was the surprise of the "Wild Cats," but they were pledged to support the nominee, bolting under such circumstances was not to be thought of, and they joined their late opponents in electing Mr. Hamlin over George Evans, the Whig candidate.
Hannibal Hamlin was born at Paris Hill, Maine, on August 27, 1809. His grandfather, Captain Eleazer Hamlin, had an honorable record as an officer in the army of the Revolution. His military and classical tastes and the independence of his mind were proved by the names he gave his sons. Abandoning the old custom of calling children after Scriptural characters. he named a son Scipio Africanus. The neighbors, however, less classical and possessing the American fondness for the short cut, persisted in calling the boy Africa. This gave the father a new idea, and succeeding children were named America (abbreviated to Merrick), Asia, and Europe. The continents were now exhausted, and when some time afterward twins arrived, ancient history was again resorted to and the babies were named Cyrus and Hannibal. Cyrus became a physician, settled in Livermore, Maine, and married Anna Livermore, daughter of Deacon Elijah Liver- more, the founder and great man of the little town. In 1805 the Doctor moved with his family to Paris. About four years later he and his twin brother Hannibal agreed that each should name his next son after the other. Dr. Hamlin soon had occasion to fulfill his pledge, and somewhat later it became the duty of Hannibal to return the compliment. Both cousins were
Hannibal Marlin
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to do honorable work and to attain high place. The elder was to sit for a quarter of a century in the United States Senate and to have his name indissolubly associated with Lincoln's; the younger was the working founder and first president of Robert College, Constantinople.
Hannibal was a very sickly infant, but under the treatment prescribed by an aged squaw, said to be a daughter of Paugus, the Indian chief killed in Lovewell's fight, his health quickly improved and he grew to be a remark- ably strong and healthy boy and a leader among his mates. He was ex- tremely fond of out-door life. His grandson says: "Hannibal used to scour the mountains and neighboring country for game and fish. He became a crack shot and a true fisherman. He seemed to find trout brooks by intui- tion, and eventually cared more for fishing than for hunting. When once he found a trout brook in an out-of-the-way place, he kept his secret to himself and one or two of his cronies. Years afterward he would go back to Paris Hill to drink in the vitalizing air and to fish. People around the Hill said that he could still find his secret trout brook, and no one else could. He was one of the best fishermen in Maine, and his passion for angling carried him from home every season until the last year of his life." (He lived to be nearly eighty-two.)
Mr. Hamlin was educated at the Paris schools and at Hebron Academy. He had hoped to go to college, but the ill health of a brother and the sudden death of his father compelled him first to postpone and then to abandon the plan entirely. An offer of a cadetship at West Point had been refused at his mother's request. He cultivated the family farm with much success. He taught school a little, surveyed a little, and was for a brief period part owner of a short-lived newspaper, the Jeffersonian; acting also as reporter and printer. His co-proprietors were Henry Carter, afterwards a promi- nent citizen of Portland and editor of the Advertiser, and Horatio King, subsequently Assistant Postmaster-General under President Buchanan. Meanwhile he was devoting his spare moments to the study of law. By the time he was twenty-three he had saved enough money to warrant his spend- ing a year as a student in the office of Fessenden and Deblois, two of the leading lawyers of Portland. They treated Hamlin with great kindness, gave him special advice and opportunities in his work, and at the end of the year declined the usual fee, General Fessenden saying, "I think you can make a better use of the money than we can, my boy. Then again, if I know you right, and I think I do, you will yourself encourage deserving young men when you will be able to."
After completing his study with Fessenden and Deblois, Hamlin was duly admitted to the bar, and won his first case on the same day, defeating his future father-in-law, Stephen Emery, a leader of the Oxford county bar. That gentleman, however, accepted the situation with a good grace, congratulated the victor, and made formal announcement of his engagement to his daughter.
ME .- 22
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Mr. Hamlin settled in Hampden, a more active place eighty years ago than it is today, and began to build up a practice, giving special attention to admiralty law. But he soon turned from law to politics, and found therein his true vocation. His father had been a Federalist and National Republican, his older brother Elijah was the Whig candidate for Governor in 1848 and 1849, but Hannibal was from the first a Democrat. His being a younger son is said to have been an indirect cause of his apostasy from the family creed. Dr. Hamlin took both the leading Portland papers, the Gazette and the Argus, but the youthful Hannibal was obliged to wait for the Gazette until his father and brother had read it, meanwhile he consoled himself with the Argus, "and before his father realized it, Hannibal had become a pronounced Democrat, and warm partisan of the doctrines of Jefferson and Jackson." This was, however, the occasion rather than the cause of his conversion, for he was a Democrat by nature. Of great phys- ical strength, hale and hearty, he enjoyed associating with all classes of men, and was in no way repelled by a roughness which would have been offensive to a person of a highly strung nervous temperament like his future colleague, William P. Fessenden. He was an inveterate smoker, and in the privacy of his apartments, when there was no one to be disturbed, pre- ferred a pipe to a cigar. He had no use for what he termed "that expen- sive noise called music," and is said to have come late to church to escape it. He never left the United States until over seventy, when he accepted an appointment as Minister to Spain. In Europe he studied the men rather than the buildings. One cathedral would answer for him, and he thought it "the grand show in every European city, the parade horse of them all." His chief interest was in things American. His grandson says, "Dickens and Thackeray were not favorites of his, though he recognized the former as a great humanitarian, and the latter as a true artist. But their books did not specially appeal to him ; he preferred to read about his own people." He, however, cared something for painting and more for poetry. He enjoyed dancing, was an inveterate card player and took an intelligent interest in the drama. Indeed in his youth he once considered going on the stage.
Mr. Hamlin was a man of great kindness of heart. He was extremely fond of children and animals. No one who knew him "could remember the time when he did not have a dog and a cat. He had at least, from first to last, a dozen dogs." When Minister to Spain he was greatly shocked by the amount of infant mortality in Madrid, and astonished the conservative, easy-going Dons by urging that the women abandon the national custom of sitting out doors till midnight with their babies.
Mr. Hamlin kept until the end of his life the humanitarian, optimistic view, characteristic of the middle nineteenth century. When Speaker of the Maine House in 1837, he took the floor in defense of a bill abolishing capital punishment, and just fifty years later, in 1887, he appeared before the Legislature to make a similar plea. In closing, he said, "You have
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honored me a great many times, and in the evening of my life, when the shadows are gathering about me, grant me this; it is all I shall ever ask you. What little time I have left, brighten for me, and let me return to my home with the knowledge that I have not wholly outlived my usefulness, and have in a small measure aided the cause of humanity."
Mr. Hamlin entirely disapproved of President Hayes' reconstruction policy, and regretted the final abandonment of the negro by the Republican party. His last long speech in the Senate was made against a bill denounc- ing the Burlingame treaty with China permitting free movement from one country to the other. Mr. Hamlin was actuated not simply by compassion for the Chinese, but by unwillingness to abruptly break a solemn treaty in- stead of politely seeking a modification. The stand was characteristic of his sturdy honesty. He resolutely refused to make money out of his position, and he held in the deepest contempt a man who broke his word.
Mr. Hamlin's "homely" tastes and warmth of heart gave him great political influence which was increased by his loyalty to his friends and supporters. He had entered politics at the time of the triumph of the spoils system and, like most men of his day, including Lincoln, he accepted and used it ; indeed, he was in close association with such well known spoilsmen as Chandler, Logan and Cameron. Yet it should be remembered that rota- tion in office helped break down a system under which office was in danger of being treated as personal property, and at times as inheritable property, that spoilsmen like Chandler could manage a department with honesty and efficiency, that the examination system of appointment is specially favorable to men of routine and red tape. The great defect of the old method was that persons were recommended for appointment to office from considera- tions of their usefulness, past or future, to their political backer, rather than to the country. In this respect Hannibal Hamlin's record was good. Senator Hoar remarked to Judge Carter of Haverill, formerly editor of the Portland Advertiser, "It is said that Mr. Hamlin has secured the appoint- ment of more men to office than any other man now in public life; but I will say that he always supports good men for office, never bad men."
Mr. Hamlin began his political career in the fall of 1835 as a successful candidate for election to the Maine House of Representatives, and served there five years, three of them as speaker. In 1840 he was nominated for Congress, but it was a Whig year and he was defeated. He tried again in 1842, was successful, and served the usual two terms. He then began to work for the United States Senatorship and in 1848 obtained it.
From this time his methods as a legislator changed. He was through life a very effective stump speaker, and while a member of the Maine House and a Representative in Congress he had taken an active part in debate, speaking at length and in the somewhat florid style which had been common in public life for many years. But when Mr. Hamlin entered the United States Senate, he found that the long set speech was less highly regarded
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than formerly. The great masters,-Calhoun, Clay and Webster,-were closing their careers. Many of the would-be orators who tried to follow in their footsteps bored rather than charmed or swayed the Senate, and their endless talk was specially offensive to one of Mr. Hamlin's practical busi- nesslike nature. Accordingly he seldom spoke at length and, especially in the latter part of his career endeavored both by precept and example to make the Senate a legislative rather than a talking body. He looked care- fully after the interests of his State and of individual constituents, worked in committee, and did valuable service in the daily business of the Senate which is so important, yet which attracts so little public attention. When he completed his final term in 1881 he was the last of the anti-slavery old guard, had served longer than any other Senator and was said to be the most influential of them all.
The year 1848 was marked by the death of John Quincy Adams, struck down by a paralytic stroke in his seat in the House. The Argus, that had opposed and abused him, calling him corrupt, a madman and a nuisance, now said that he "battled manfully and eloquently for what he believed to be right, often running counter to the views and wishes of his warmest friends." "He was a man of great simplicity, purity and industry."
The Maine Legislature, when it met in May, found the contest for the Democratic nomination for the presidency still unsettled, but with the chances decidedly in favor of General Cass. The other candidates were James Buchanan and Levi Woodbury, of New Hampshire, then a justice of the United States Supreme Court. The Democrats of the Legislature held a caucus and by a vote of 94 to 14 declared that they believed that Levi Woodbury was the first choice of the people of Maine for President. When the convention met, Judge Woodbury was nominated by Hannibal Hamlin and obtained 53 votes on the first ballot. But General Cass received on the same ballot only one less than a majority, and on the fourth ballot more than two-thirds of the votes were cast for him, and he was therefore nominated.
The Democrats of Maine had appeared to be nearly unanimously in favor of Woodbury, but he was supported as a New Englander rather than from any great personal popularity, and his defeat caused little or no bit- terness. The Whigs were less fortunate. After the defeat of Clay in 1844, many of his most loyal supporters felt that he could never be Presi- dent, and they returned to the methods of 1840 and began to look around for a leader who could win. His qualifications for the presidency and his belief in Whig principles were matters of less importance. The Mexican War turned their attention to General Taylor, the victor of Buena Vista. who was a kind of Whig. The people were ready to follow him without inquiring about his views on public questions. There was a widespread discontent with politicians, who were regarded as selfish and scheming, and tren were eager to turn from them to "Old Rough and Ready," the simple,
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honest soldier. Democrats as well as Whigs considered him as a candidate. Taylor accepted the nomination of a Young Men's Democratic Convention and the General's managers had some trouble in preventing him from being so non-partisan as to disgust the Whigs.
The Taylor movement in Maine began early. In April, 1847, the Argus thought it well, while expressing admiration for General Taylor, to urge the Democrats not to be hasty in selecting a candidate, and to declare that he must be known to be strictly orthodox. At the Whig convention for nomi- nating a Governor, held at Augusta, May 27, 1847, a notice was given of a meeting of the friends of Taylor. The gathering was not harmonious, for though Whigs were managing the meeting, Democrats who were Taylor men attended. Three resolutions were reported. The third charged the national administration with imbecility and corruption, and predicted that a Buena Vista awaited it. A Democrat, Mr. Smith, of Augusta, said that this kind of an entertainment was not the one to which he had been invited, that he believed that the administration was a wise and virtuous one, and that Tay . lor was a Republican of the old Virginia school. Mr. Farley, of New- castle, replied that he would not support Taylor did he not believe him a Whig; that he believed that Taylor was honest and "would break down the accursed spoils system, which was eating in like a gangrene to the vitals of our Republic." A motion to strike out the third resolution was defeated on a show of hands by a vote of about 3 to I, and the resolutions were passed.
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